US’s Electric Vehicle Boom Is Deepening the Suffering in the Congo

May 27, 2024

Black transit activists in the US are calling attention to the plunder of the Congo for cobalt mining.

he story of “John Doe 1” of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is tucked in a lawsuit filed five years ago against several U.S. tech companies, including Tesla, the world’s largest electric vehicle producer.

In a country where the earth hides its treasures beneath its surface, those who chip away at its bounty pay an unfair price. As a pre-teen, his family could no longer afford to pay his $6 monthly school fee, leaving him with one option: a life working underground in a tunnel, digging for cobalt rocks.

But soon after he began working for roughly two U.S. dollars per day, the child was buried alive under the rubble of a collapsed mine tunnel. His body was never recovered.

The nation, fractured by war, disease, and famine, has seen more than 6 million people die since the mid-1990s, making the conflict the deadliest since World War II. But, in recent years, the death and destruction have been aided by the growing number of electric vehicles humming down American streets.

In 2022, the U.S., the world’s third-largest importer of cobalt, spent nearly $525 million on the mineral, much of which came from the Congo.

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[Top photo: Miners carry bags of ore in the copper-cobalt Shabara artisanal mine near the town of Kolwezi, Lualaba, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, on June 20, 2023. ARLETTE BASHIZI / FOR THE WASHINGTON POST VIA GETTY IMAGES]